[CHAPTER XL]
When she revived, Consuelo sat on a purple carpet, covering steps of white marble leading into an elegant portico in the Corinthian style. Two men in masks, whom she concluded by the color of their cloaks to be Leverani and Marcus, sustained, and seemed anxious to restore her. About forty other persons cloaked and masked, the same she had seen around the image of the tomb of Christ, stood in two ranks, and chanted in chorus a solemn hymn, in an unknown language, wearing crowns of roses and palms, and green boughs. The pillars were adorned with festoons of garlands, like triumphal arches, before the closed door of the temple, and above Consuelo. The moon, brilliant and in mid-heaven, illumined the whole white facade; and outside the sanctuary, old yews, cypresses, and pines formed an immense thicket, like a sacred wood, beneath which a mysterious stream, glancing in the silver light of the moon, murmured.
"My sister," said Marcus, aiding Consuelo to rise, "you have passed every test in triumph. Blush not at having failed in a physical point of view, under the pain of grief. Your generous heart was overcome by indignation and pity, at palpable evidences of the crimes and sufferings of man. If you had reached this place unassisted, we would have had less respect for you than now, when we have brought you hither overcome and insensible. You have seen the sacred places of a lordly castle—not of one celebrated above all others by the crimes of which it has been the theatre, but like others whose ruins cover all Europe—terrible wrecks of the vast net with which feudal power enwrapped, during so many centuries, the whole civilised world, and oppressed men with the crime of its awful domination and with the horrors of civil war. These hideous abodes, these savage fortresses, have necessarily served as theatres for all the crimes humanity witnessed before it was enlightened by means of the religious wars—by the toil of sects struggling to emancipate man, and by the martyrdom of the elect to establish the idea of truth.
"Pass through Germany, France, Italy, England, Spain, and the Slavonic countries, and you will not enter a valley or ascend a mountain, without seeing above you the ruin of some imposing tower or castle, or, at least, finding in the grass beneath your feet the vestiges of some fortification. These are the bloody traces of the right of conquest of the people by the patricians. If you explore these ruins—if you look into the soil which has devoured them and which seeks constantly to make them disappear, you will find everywhere traces of what you have found here—a jail, a well for the dead, narrow and dark dungeons for prisoners of importance, a place for silent murder, and on the summit of some huge tower, or in the depth of some dungeon, stocks for rebellious serfs or mutinous soldiers, a gallows for deserters and a stake for heretics. How many have perished in boiling pitch! how many have disappeared beneath the wave! how many have been buried alive! The walls of castles, the waters of rivers and rocky caverns, could they speak, would unfold myriads of crimes. The number is too great for history to enumerate in detail.
"Not the nobles alone, not the patrician races only, have made the soil red with innocent blood. Kings and princes and priests, thrones and churches, were the great causes of the iniquities and the living sources of destruction. Persevering yet melancholy attention has collected in our manor a portion of the instruments of torture used by the strong against the weak. A description of their uses would not be credible; the virtues could scarcely comprehend them; thought refuses to register them. During many centuries these terrible apparatus were used in royal palaces, in the citadels of petty princes, but above all, in the dungeons of the Holy Office. They are yet used there, though but rarely. The Inquisition yet exists: and in France, the most civilised country of the world, the provincial parliament even now burns witches.
"Besides, is royal tyranny now overthrown? Do kings and princes no longer ravage the earth? Does not war desolate opulent cities, as well as the pauper's hut, at the merest whim of a petty prince? Serfdom yet exists in half of Europe. Are not troops yet subjected to the lash and cane? The handsomest and bravest soldiers of the world, those of Prussia, are taught their duty like animals, by beating. Are not the Russian serfs often unmercifully knouted? If the fortresses of old barons are dismantled, and turned into harmless abodes, are not those of kings yet erect? Are they not frequently places where the innocent are confined? Were not you, my sister, the purest and mildest of women, a prisoner at Spandau?
"We knew you were generous, and relied on your character of justice and charity. Seeing you destined, like many who are here, to return to the world, to approach the persons of sovereigns, as you were particularly liable to their influence, it was our duty to put you on your guard against the intoxication of that brilliant and dangerous life. It was our duty to spare you no instructions, not even that of a terrible kind. We appealed to your mind by the solitude to which we doomed you, by the books we gave you. We spoke to your heart by paternal advice, now tender, and now stern. We addressed your vision by experiences of more painful significance than those of the old mysteries. Now if you persist in receiving your initiation, you may present yourself before the incorruptible paternal judges, who now are ready to crown you here, or give you leave to quit us forever."
As he concluded, Marcus pointed to the open door of the temple, above which were written the three words—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—in letters of fire.
Consuelo was physically crushed and weakened to such a degree, that she existed in her mind alone. Standing at the base of a column, she leant on Leverani, but without seeing or thinking of him. However, she had not lost one word said by the initiator. Speechless, pale as a spectre, and with her eyes fixed, she had that wild expression which follows nervous crises. A deep enthusiasm filled her bosom, the feeble respiration of which Leverani could not distinguish. Her black eyes, which fatigue and suffering had caused to sink, glared brightly. A slight compression of her brow evinced deep resolution. Her beauty, which had always seemed gentle and soft, now appeared fearful. Leverani became as pale as the jessamine leaf which the night wind made to quiver on his mistress's brow. She arose, with more power than might have been expected; but at once her knees gave way, and she was almost borne up the steps by him, without the restraint of the arm, which had moved to the neighborhood of her heart, to which it had been pressed, disturbing the current of her thoughts for an instant. He placed between his own hand and Consuelo's, the silver cross, as a token to inform her who he was, and which, like a talisman, had given him such influence over her. Consuelo appeared neither to recognise the token, nor the hand that presented it. Her own was contracted by suffering. It was a mere mechanical pressure, as when on the brink of an abyss we seize a branch to sustain ourselves. The heart's blood did not reach her icy hand.
"Marcus," said Leverani, in a low tone, as the former passed him to knock at the door of the temple, "do not leave us; I fear the test has been too great."